Vehicles such as cars and trucks require regularly scheduled maintenance. Many of the components that require maintenance or repair are located under the vehicle. In order to access these components, the vehicle is often lifted off of the ground in order to allow a technician to get under the vehicle to access the components. The jacks used to lift the vehicles are often hydraulic in order to generate the force required to lift the vehicle.
In some instances, the entire vehicle may not be lifted off the ground but only a portion of the vehicle such as the front or rear of the vehicle. In some instances, just one of the corners of the vehicles may be lifted off the ground. Because vehicles are made of several sensitive components, the vehicle jack must be placed in an appropriate manner in order to only contact a component such as the frame or other components of the vehicle that can withstand the forces of the jack lifting the vehicle.
Thus, a technician when desiring to lift all or part of a vehicle must take care to ensure that the vehicle and the jack are appropriately located with respect to each other before attempting to raise the vehicle. In order to ensure that the jack and the vehicle are aligned in a desired manner, the technicians often must bend down and look under the vehicle in order to see how the vehicle and the jack are positioned with respect to each other.
In some instances, it may be difficult to verify the relative positions of the vehicle and the jack due to the fact that it may be dark under the vehicle and it may be awkward for the technician to bend down and get a good view of the relative positions of the jack and vehicle. In some instances, the technician's vision may be obstructed by portions of the vehicle.
In instances where there technician is using a portable service jack, if the jack and the vehicle are not properly positioned with respect to each other, the technician will simply move the jack to another location or adjust the location of the jack. However, these minor adjustments of the location of the jack still require that the technician bend down and look under the vehicle to ensure the jack is in the correct location. Therefore, it would be desirable to have a method or apparatus that can assist the technician in ensuring that the jack is properly located with respect to the vehicle.